


Twenty Years

by Stripe



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-27
Updated: 2012-12-27
Packaged: 2017-11-22 14:45:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/610967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stripe/pseuds/Stripe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the midst of crafting her memoir, Rose Lalonde is visited by an old friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Twenty Years

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ChelseaCattos](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChelseaCattos/gifts).



> For this prompt:
> 
> "Jade Harley, Rose Lalonde  
> I want to see these two meet up face-to-face! Maybe have them share stories about their three long years living with their ecto-bros. Or exchange romance advice. Or talk shop and figure out what steps to take next."
> 
> Mind you I did not tag any pairs for this, but there are mentions of canon relationships that happened on the three years journey!
> 
> Also my apologies because I think this probably turned out to be far more depressing than the prompt bargained for.

It's when it's pouring down like this, the rain so heavy she can hardly see the forest outside her house, that Rose is reminded most of the game. It's been easier to forget as of late, with twenty years between her and it, with a successful career under her belt and friends who know nothing of her role as the Seer of Light. But on days like this, she stares out her window and remembers the storm that took her power, remembers the land she had spent so much time destroying. She remembers the aliens she met, and fell in love with, and lost.

She remembers the friends she played with. She didn't lose them, but it feels like it, sometimes. 

On days like this, Rose Lalonde brings her laptop in the kitchen, where she can watch the rain through the large picture windows, and she sits down to write a book that can never be published. She opens the document, hidden through a convoluted series of folders only she knows how to navigate properly, and continues.

_Though I rather imagine we had all planned to hit the ground running when entering the new session, it happened that we would instead be forced to endure a good deal of down time, as our ancestors needed some time to get themselves straightened out. I must admit I had been hoping they would be better prepared, given the months they had to prepare before our arrival, but teenage drama does often seem to get in the way of a good game._

_Yet this extra time turned out to be something of a blessing. In my three years, I had only caught glimpses of John in the dreambubbles, and had seen hide nor hair of Jade the entire time. As it turns out, missing out on three years of two of your best friends’ lives does tend to leave one with a terrible amount of catching up to do. So while our teenaged ancestors dealt with their own crises, I found myself dragged into quite another hallmark of a normal adolescence – a sleepover, at Jade’s behest._

Rose stops typing - it's a little cold in the kitchen, and she finds herself overwhelmed with the impulse to make a cup of tea. She pushes away from the table, allowing herself a small break, though she can’t help but continue to write in her head, picking choice words as she prepares the boiling water.

_It was to be just her and me, with no boys and no trolls. There were other sleepovers in the future which would encourage the intermingling of our species, but this first was to be just the two of us, where we could not be distracted from our goal of reacquainting ourselves with such petty things as cultural exchange._

_The location was the Land of Light and Rain, in my old house, which I must admit I was grateful to see once again. John and Jade had kept the place clean in their three years of possessing my planet, and had possibly done a better job of upkeep than my mother. I suspect that they had not attempted to use the bronzed vacuum. Thankfully, Jade gave me a few hours to get used to the feel of the place again before our sleepover was to commence. It was clear to me that, though John and Jade had done what they could to take care of my home, it had not been well inhabited. It still smelled faintly of my mother’s perfume._

Rose deliberates on her next lines for quite a while, quite unsure of how to properly explain the feeling of homecoming, and this deliberation brings her through to the end of her tea. Before she can return to typing, however, her cell phone buzzes noisily across her marble counter top, demanding attention. Rose grabs it quickly, her eyes scanning the incoming message. 

"hi rose! i am going to show up in about thirty seconds! :D"

She curses mentally - so much for getting more written today - but she hardly has time to formulate a response. It took about ten seconds for her to reach her phone, two to read the message, another five to comprehend what it meant, and she knows that trying to respond in her remaining thirteen seconds would be fruitless, so she counts them down instead.

Seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, and- 

ZAP!

"Hi, Rose!"

_Yet when Jade arrived, I found the entire scenario to be shockingly normal. She knocked on my front door, politely, before she saw herself in via teleportation. I admit it was still odd seeing her in her god tier attire with her new set of ears, but then it was odd to see Jade in person at all._

Rose turns to find Jade standing next to her kitchen table, still as youthful in her thirties as she ever was during the game. The set of white ears still rests nestled among her hair, twitching thoughtfully as she adjusts herself to her new surroundings. Her skin is roasted brown, and Rose is sure that Jade has been spending her time far from the rainy Northeast.

"Hello, Jade," she says, trying to manage a smile for her old friend. "Unexpected as always."

Jade's smile holds no remorse. "You weren't in the middle of anything too important, were you?"

_“Hi, Rose!” she greeted, smiling at me. I admit it was something of a relief to see that three years had not acted to lessen her buck teeth – they were still present, and endearing as ever. “I didn’t show up too early or anything, did I?”_

_“Not at all. I had actually just been wondering when I would be graced with your presence. Please, come in.” It hardly needed saying, as she was already in my living room, but the formality felt useful at the time._

"Only my memoir. No worries, I doubt my publisher will ever agree to put it to print, so you are hardly intruding upon a deadline." Rose makes a subtle effort to straighten herself out, tucking back stray strands of hair and smoothing out the fabric of her nightgown. Though Jade has certainly intruded upon more embarrassing moments in the past, there is still a desire to appear presentable. She makes a gesture to a spare seat at the kitchen table. "Please, make yourself comfortable."

Jade wastes no time in doing just this, and she looks curiously outside. "Wow, it's really raining outside right now!"

"So it is," Rose agrees, and she comes to sit across the table from Jade, shutting her laptop firmly. She wants no distractions from this visit. "I take it that you've been spending your time in sunnier destinations?" It's odd to be reduced to discussing the weather with somebody she saved the multiverse with.

"I have!" Jade says. "I spent a while out in the Sahara before coming here. It's kind of a shock to see so much water again!"

_In short order, we had disposed of the formalities and gone to my room. I felt compelled to describe the purpose of the wizards lining the hall, formulating an answer in my mind should the question ever arise, but Jade hardly paid them any mind. I was surprised, though I shouldn’t have been – surely a trip to Dave’s apartment would have properly desensitized anybody to the decorations in my own home._

_We settled down with blankets and pillows, and Jade had brought some alchemized food with her – a small blessing after enduring troll food for three years._

_I started the conversation – “So,” I said, “What all have I missed in our three years apart? I’m sure there must be a myriad of riveting tales that I am not privy to.”_

"I can imagine." Rose takes a sip of her tea. "Do you have any nail-biting stories to share with me?"

Jade grins at her. "Trying to mine my life for your next novel?" she asks. "I am onto your tricks, Rose!"

"Forgive me - such is the life of an author. My own life is so weighted with deadlines and red pens that I simply cannot conjure a tale out of my own life experience, and am forced to rely on the experiences of my far more exciting friends." A pause. "If it's any possible consolation, I promise that any tale I write from your life will not be nearly as embarrassing as Dave's rather unfortunate encounter with the feathered dinosaurs."

"Oh, is that where you got the idea for the monster chickens in the fourth book?" Jade asks, leaning forward excitedly. 

"The proper term is chimera," Rose corrects, "but yes."

_Jade was surprisingly forthcoming. “I dated Davesprite for a year,” she said. “But then he broke up with me.”_

_I must admit to being surprised – not that there had been a relationship, but to hear that he had been the one to end it. “He broke up with you?” I repeated, incredulous. “What possible reason could he have had? Surely he could not have expected better prospects elsewhere.”_

_Jade was understandably a bit sheepish about this, but she respected the silent promise for honesty that sleepovers called for. “He just needed time to sort himself out,” she says. “It’s tough when you’re a copy of somebody else, because you still feel like you, but nobody else sees you that way. And so you need to figure out if you’re gonna keep on being you or try to be somebody else entirely.”_

_This was surprising to hear from her, and I cannot deny that my immature, therapist fantasies temporarily got the best of me. “You speak as though you have some personal experience with this.”_

_She tapped two fingers at her temple and explained with just a word: “Jadesprite.”_

_“Ah, forgive me, I’d forgotten.” I was desperate to turn the conversation to a topic I was somewhat more knowledgeable of, to save some face. “Regardless, it seems you discovered a way to satisfy Karkat’s shipping chart, if temporarily. I don’t suppose you’ve considered pursuing the alpha Dave, now that you and he have been reunited?”_

_Jade’s expression was shockingly passive as she responded, “Probably not! Davesprite is still around and isn’t alpha Dave already seeing somebody? I’m really glad to see him again, though!”_

Jade laughs, but there's a bit of hollowness to it. "I never get to see him anymore.”

"You must forgive him - you're often quite hard to pin down," Rose says. "Both of you are. Often I learn of your escapades from the news, and his from the history books. It's hardly a surprise that your paths rarely cross."

Jade sighs. "I know. It just sucks." 

"That it does. Next time he drops by this era, I will see if I can't hold him for a few of his precious hours so that you two can visit." 

Jade's never been an expert at hiding her emotions, so when a smile crosses her face, Rose can be assured it's genuine. "Thank you," she says. "But I will definitely hold you to that! If I find out that he's come to visit you and you haven't forced him to stick around then I will be super angry and not ever tell you any cool stories again."

"That seems like a fair deal," Rose says, hiding a smile as she sips at her tea.

There's silence for a moment. 

Then - "Have you heard anything from John?"

"No."

_“What about John?” Jade asked me suddenly. I admit to raising an eyebrow._

_“What about him?”_

_“Well, you two got put together on Karkat’s chart too! And he won’t stop going on and on about girlfriends and marriage and stuff.”_

_The implication was painfully clear. “Though John is indeed a good friend of mine, and I am happy to see him again, I’m afraid that I’ve been in a relationship with Kanaya for a year now. I have little intention of breaking up with her simply so that I can fulfill a diagram hastily sketched out by a small, shouty alien.”_

_“Oh.” Jade looked shocked for a moment, but she was quick to grin and clasp her hands together. “Oh, Rose, that’s great! I’m so happy for you!”_

"Oh."

There’s another moment of silence, punctuated by the storm outside kicking up a notch, the wind rattling the house. Rose always hopes that’s a sign that he might finally be paying her a visit after all this time, but she’s always wrong. 

But Jade is practically wilting with this reminder, her ears drooping into her tangled, dark hair. And this is not how Rose wants to remember her for the next few months, so she's forced to execute a rather abrupt redirection of the conversation. 

"But I do believe," she says, "that I was promised a retelling of some of your escapades, correct? You simply cannot be allowed to leave without sharing them with me. As you have presumed, they are the lifeblood on which my career feeds."

Jade's ears perk up again at this, and she peers up at Rose over her glasses. "You've really got no shame about your sneaky, story-stealing ways," she comments, and there's the faintest hint of a smile on her lips.

"It's not stealing," Rose insists. "Merely adaptation. If you like, I will even let you read over a draft before I send it to my editor, to ensure that I do not mess up your own tale. Though this would require you making yourself available."

_I was glad that Jade was so instantly supportive, and could not help but smile at her. “I’m glad you think so. We’ve had our ups and downs – quite literally, in some instances. She dropped me down the stairs once.”_

_Jade looked properly aghast. “On purpose?”_

_“No. I was rather drunk at the time, I fear.”_

_“Rose!”_

"You have my cell phone number!"

"Yes, but how frequently do you have cell phone service?"

Jade frowns. "Well, it's not my fault that the coolest places don't get a good signal."

"Cities do not qualify as 'cool places'?"

Jade's ears flatten again. "Too crowded," she says. "I like meeting new people and everything, but I don't know how anybody can stand being around so many! And cities are really noisy too!"

Rose sighs - one could take the girl from the island, but... "I suppose I cannot blame you terribly for avoiding them. It would just be nice to have a more reliable means of communication. You can be even more difficult to reach than Dave, sometimes, and there are a number of times when he literally does not physically exist, because he's off traipsing through the Mesozoic."

"I'm sorry." Jade slumps a little bit in her chair. It feels like their conversations always come to this anymore; Rose wrings her guilt out in her hands.

_“It was a rather boring three years.” I explained. This did little to erase the disappointment on Jade’s face, however._

_“But you had trolls!” she insisted, as though this were not in fact reason more to take up the bottle._

_“The novelty wore off after the first month,” I explained. “And there was a certain need to assign goals to ourselves in order to keep from simply going mad. I decided to try mixing drinks - it proved to be an excellent distraction from boredom.”_

_Jade gnawed at her lower lip with her still-sizeable incisors, but eventually conceded my point. “I guess we got to do the quests on the planets, at least,” she said. “Though it still got pretty boring sometimes. John made all of us play some stupid Ghostbusters MMO for a little bit.”_

"It's quite alright. I understand that you live a much more exciting life than mine." It's a feeble attempt to revive the good nature that Jade had come here with. "Which reminds me, you were about to share a story? I would still love to hear it."

"So you can write about me?" Jade asks, eyebrows raised. Rose is ashamed to admit she cannot tell whether the suspicion on Jade's face is real or farcical. 

_“You continued the quests?” I asked, honestly surprised. I had assumed they would no longer work outside of our incipisphere._

_“Some of them,” Jade responded. “The denizens were still around and everything! Well, they still are, actually, since you don't really have to kill them. Though... we had some trouble with yours. Davesprite knew some stuff about what was supposed to happen in LOLAR, but a lot of your temples and puzzles were destroyed.”_

_“My doing,” I said without remorse. “I was overcome with a somewhat destructive urge during the game, as I’m sure you remember.”_

"I will only say the kindest, most flattering things," she promises.

"Then OK. I guess I can tell you a story!" And her ears perk up just a little bit, which comes as a small relief. 

_“Yeah, your denizen seemed pretty angry about it!”_

_“You spoke to her?”_

_“We spoke to all the denizens!” She was quite enthusiastic about this, as she was about many things. “It turns out that they have a lot for us to do!”_

Jade tells her a story. It's poorly put together, with comments and corrections made as Jade remembers them, but it's entertaining all the same. Evidently, she had decided to visit some of the tombs while she was in Egypt, to see if the curses were really true. In the end it turns out that no, Egyptian curses are not a thing, which is something she learned first-hand from the people studying them, who came across her after she had broken in. They had intended to arrest her at first, but as was typical with Jade, her genuine interest in what they were doing managed to win them over, and so she ended up sitting through a few hours of an impromptu lecture about Egyptology before they let her go. It's a charming story - and so very much like Jade - and Rose can't help but smile as it concludes.

_She told me, then, in great detail how she, John, and Davesprite had visited every planet, one by one, and had spoken to the denizens. Each story was grander than the last, and it took her a good hour just to give me a summary. It was a fantastic tale as a whole, though she insisted it wasn’t really as fun as it sounded, because, in her words, “John and Dave were always so grumpy!”_

_I admit I was struck with just a bit of envy. They had managed to continue making progress in the game, while we on the meteor were stagnating._

"It sounds like you had a fun time in Egypt, then," Rose comments. "Is that where you're planning on returning?"

Jade rubs her thumb contemplatively against her chin as she ponders this answer. Finally - "Probably not! I was thinking maybe going back to the Amazon again. I never got to explore the canopy as much as I wanted last time I was there, and I've had enough dry climate to last me at least another few months."

The Amazon - not particularly renowned for its cell service. "It's quite wet here, if you hadn't noticed," Rose offers. She doesn't expect Jade to stay, but she can't help but offer.

_“But don’t worry!” she finished with a cheery smile. “I’m sure we’ll have time to get you and Dave all caught up on your lands, especially since our ancestors aren’t ready yet. It will be a lot of fun!”_

_“I look forward to it, then.”_

"Yeah, but it's way too cold here," Jade says, making a face. "And your animals aren't as fun."

"There's a band of coyotes that's taken up residence in the woods behind my house."

"Coyotes are cute and all, but _jaguars_!"

And this has Jade standing up again, bouncing on the balls of her feet. Rose smiles sadly - she knows she should be glad that Jade even stayed as long as she did.

“I suspect that anything I have to offer you here will not top jaguars,” she says. Then, reluctantly, “And I’d hate to keep you from your next adventure.”

Jade beams at her. “It was nice catching up with you!” she chimes, and she does at least walk over to offer Rose a friendly hug goodbye. Rose stands to receive it.

“Yes, it was nice getting to see you,” she agrees. “Don’t be a stranger.”

“See ya!”

_“But enough about my three years,” Jade said, and I could not help but notice that her voice sounded a little tired after reenacting three years of gaming. “I want to hear more about you! I’m sure you must have some good stories to talk about. Even if it’s just about Dave or Karkat being dumb!”_

_I couldn’t help but smile again. “Yes, I believe those stories are rather in abundance.”_

With that, Jade’s gone again, vanished into thin air almost as quickly as she’d arrived. Rose lets out a sigh, taking her seat again at her computer, intent on resuming her memoir again. However, when she gets to the end of her last sentence, she finds herself without much motivation to continue.

_I cannot pretend to recall the rest of the details of our conversation from there._

She makes a quick note of the time before moving onto something else. Jade’s visit had totaled to a mere fifteen minutes.

_We must have talked for hours._


End file.
